Damien Basset

Peugeot Scooters – Head of Advance Design and Brand Identity

Industrial designer with broad experience with all aspects of design: concept, industrialization and mass production of motorcycles and recreational vehicles.

Damien Basset is currently Head of Advance Design and Brand Identity at Peugeots Scooters. He has various experiences in design projects as leader on numerous vehicles for Honda, Ducati, and BRP, to name a few.

Lutz Eckstein

After obtaining his diploma and a PhD in mechanical engineering from Stuttgart University, Lutz Eckstein held various positions in research and development at Daimler AG for ten years. Following five years as general manager in the Electrics/Electronics division of BMW Group he was appointed by RWTH Aachen University in January 2010 as chair of the Institute for Automotive Engineering (ika). At ika more than 100 scientists carry out research on chassis, drive train, body, E/E and driver assistance in order to sustainably improve safety, efficiency and driving experience. Lutz Eckstein is a member of the National Platform on E-Mobility in Germany and inventor of more than 80 national and international Patents.

Lutz Fügener

Pforzheim University – Professor of Transportation Design

Lutz Fügener, born in Wolgast near the Baltic Sea, studied two years engineering (basic studies) at Technische Universität in Dresden. In 1989 he transfered to Hochschule für Kunst und Design, Burg Giebichenstein in Halle to study Industrial Design. He finished studies in 1995, graduated as Diplom-Designer.

During his studies in Halle he worked on several transportation design projects and specialized in application of 3D-computer techniques to the design process.

From 1995 to 1996 Lutz Fügener worked for Deutsche Waggonbau AG (today: Bombardier Transportation) on the design projekt new urban railway trains for the city of Berlin („Neue S-Bahn Berlin“). He was responsible for the virtual constituent of the project.

In 1996 he became junior-partner of Fisch & Vogel Design Studio in Berlin (renamed in studioFT in 2004). StudioFT, where he since 1998 is responsible as co-partner, is specialized on transportation design and works for several partners in Europe and Asia.

In 2000 Lutz Fügener was appointed to a professorship in Transportation Design / 3D-Gestaltung at Pforzheim University. He is responsible for the Bachelors Course Transportation Design.

Rüdiger Heim

Fraunhofer-Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability – Vice Director

Rüdiger Heim is a 51-years old mechanical engineer who has been involved in road vehicle product development and research since 1992. He graduated from Technical University Darmstadt, having his focus on material science and automotive engineering. Before he joined Fraunhofer LBF, he was working many years for an engineering service supplier at sites in Cologne, Stuttgart and Ruesselsheim, supporting automotive body engineering programs. The attributes he was working on, were primarily crashworthiness and structural durability.

Beyond traditional approaches for body engineering, he was introducing novel solutions such as rigid polyurethane foam to stiffen relevant cavities of the body structure. In 2005 he joined Europe´s largest organization for applied research: the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. At the Fraunhofer-Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability in Darmstadt he is now in charge of an R&D division as well as he is deputy director of the institute since 2014. Parallel to his focus on structural durability, he is strongly involved in R&D activities related to low & zero emission vehicles. At the University for applied Science in Kaiserslautern he is giving a lecture in “structural durability” for an international master´s study program.

Daniel Huber

Spirit Design – Managing Partner, Strategic Design

Daniel Huber and his partner Georg Wagner founded Spirit Design, the strategic design company, in 1993. Since then, Huber has served as Managing Partner and Head of the Strategic Design business field. He and his team formulate and realize innovations in the fields of industrial and corporate design for renowned clients that are active in a wide variety of sectors – including in the mobility sector the WESTbahn, the ÖBB railjet trains, the CAT City Airport Train and the Rosenbauer Panther fire-fighting vehicle.

Daniel Huber has won a large number of international design awards. He has also been nominated for a variety of prizes, and his projects have been the subject of countless major exhibitions. Huber is regarded as being an expert on Design Driven Innovation and on trends of the future.

Werner Rom

VIRTUAL VEHICLE Research Center – Head of the Area “Cross Domain”

His activities focus on pre-acquisition, key accounting/PR & coordination of services with OEMs, project development (mainly European projects), and strategic corporate issues.

Among others, Werner Rom is coordinator of EU-LIVE and of DEWI (“dependable embedded wireless infrastructure”), one of the largest European R&D projects with 58 partners from 11 European countries. Werner Rom is representative at A3PS, the Austrian Association for the Advancement of Propulsion Systems, and also official delegate of the Austrian Standards Institute to ISO JTC1/WG7 on Sensor Networks.

As a PhD physicist Werner Rom has nearly 20 years of experience in international project management in business / industry, research and the public sector, in Traffic Telematics, Electric mobility and in Automotive / Aerospace / Rail Technology as project developer and coordinate on national and EU level.